danceREMIX
by Sinead Rivka
Summary: .:Movieverse:. Rewrite of an earlier version; I find this more solid. Jazz was named after a style of smooth, cool Earth music, but does it have a pure beat that pounds through his Spark, giving him the chance to relax ... to dance? No pairings. None.
1. danceREMIX

_**Dance Remix  
by Sinead  
**_

_Transformers Movieverse._

_Don't own Transformers, and I don't own the song "Fanatica" by Eisbrecher, but am fairly addicted to it. .;; It's a really good song, introduced to me by Lady Venom, and omg, it's great techno. ADDICTIVE. FIND IT. YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT. (This has been a public service announcement provided by the following sponsors: Jazz, Bumblebee Arcee, and most importantly, Optimus Prime. all Trademark Hasbro/Takara)_

_Comment, please!!_

* * *

_Feed my fire  
Let me put some__Dust on your face  
Heat my wire  
You make me feel ecstatic  
Make me dance fanatic tonight_

_Tanz – Fanatica  
Tanz – Fanatica_

Human music.

Interesting sounds.

Hmm.

Taking a moment to stretch his wheels, test his limits and speed as all but he had done so far this first evening on Earth, Jazz let his optics and outer sensors rest at half-mast, allowing himself to drift along the sounds of their music genre that they called electronica. It sounded almost like the music back home, _almost_, only without the human words and the human connotations behind the words, and the fact that they had only one musical layer that could be audibly detected. The songs back home were different. Odd. Different. Good. They were curiously simplistically complex, but at the same time, so very wonderful to listen to. If you had an experienced audio, you could discern past the original song into the layers beyond, usually sub-melodies that showed the true worth of the artist in question and the true song that they sang.

He began to sway along the lanes of the road, his Pontiac Solstice form slithering along under the streetlamps with nothing more holding onto him except for the wind, and even that didn't hinder his path. Silver paint only helped to make it seem like he was going faster than he really was.

There was nobody on the road, and nobody within his personal scanner range.

Going off-road with a skittering of loose gravel, Jazz transformed, optics half-off, his mind listening intently to the song going through repeat. Slowly, slowly, he began to sway to the beat, hips swaying first to one side, pause, bob, sway the other direction, pause, bob in place . . . It was an interesting human dance move that Jazz tried out, and he found it agreeable. He kept this rhythm up, slowly losing himself in the music and raising his arms to his neck, then stretched them upwards, as if reaching for an unknown lover high above him.

Drawing his arms back down, he shortened the sway of his hips, sway-pause-sway-pause, arms and hands 

moving around himself slowly, changing directions only slightly as he felt need to do so. He didn't know that he was now broadcasting the sounds of his aural drug through his external speakers, hearing the song both within his head and through his audios. He tilted his head back, drawing fingertips so very lightly up his thighs and torso, crossing over his chest, then traveling back downwards, following the same path, head weaving, bowed through the action.

He didn't know he was no longer alone.

Continuing to lose himself in the sounds of a human song that reminded him of home, the smallest Autobot slowed his movements as the song hit a breakdown, moving as only an experienced dancer could. He followed the path of the song as it built back up again, his arms going back up so that his hands were behind his head and his hips were soon gyrating in a pace and movement that the humans called a figure-eight, wanting only to move in the rhythm of the song.

As the song game to its end, he slowly came out of the state of mind he had sent himself into, standing with loosened limbs, gazing up at the moon. Sighing, turning around, Jazz kept his optics upon the heavens, slowly letting them drift down to the horizon and back to where the road lay behind him. He saw Bumblebee watching him with a skeptical gaze.

Oh. Damn.

Bumblebee sashayed over, bouncing upon his toes lightly for a bot his size and weight, stopping directly before Jazz, staring slightly downwards, head tilted to one side very slightly. The challenge in his posture was enough to cause Jazz to bark a laugh and launch into the song again, watching the style his friend used to dance with while dancing his own way, incorporating the motions of many alien races into his smooth movements.

The sunbright bot twisted and seemed to move with ease and grace through the complicated pattern he had chosen, hands lightly fisted, feet never staying still as his optics also drifted. The moonlight played over his gleaming paint softly, dulling edges, blurring the details.

Suddenly, neither were on Earth anymore.

* * *

_It was a neutral club and bar on Cybertron that they had met at, bet at, drank at, flirted at, and became friends at. Only the best music, only the best drinks, but the clientele were of the mid-class, low-class and the high-class who disguised themselves as the lower classes. Insignias were covered, disguised, and nobody asked who was from what faction. Everyone came for the dancing, the loving, the high-grade. Lights pulsed in time with the music, holographic displays played their landscapes, their singers, their dancers, and bots tangled themselves in dances of the upright and the horizontal kind, but the latter was the kind that was performed in the shadows and corners._

_The particular night they met, an amateur dance competition had been the draw for Bumblebee to come to this particular neutral club. Jazz had been the judge, gently teasing the bots who were off-beat, laughing with them as they got off the dance floor to crowd the seating area, joking with the ones who lost balance and fell into others both on and off the floor, disqualifying both or all if they were participants. If you couldn't get out of the way of those who were around you, why bother dancing in a competition at all? The final three were at precise equal distances from each other, and Jazz had walked onto the floor amid cheers and bots pressing closer to see if he was going to join the dance. He stood between all three in the center of the triangle, seeing how the royal purple, light blue and soft yellow coloration of their bodies shifted with the lights turning off and on over them. They switched colorations, then appearances as the holographic projectors found them, giving them the appearance of sheer flowing energy behind their movements, each of different colorations._

_Jazz reveled in their raw talent, beginning to feel the true beat of the song as it finally was introduced within the bars and measures. He watched carefully as they began to separate in rhythm, but only slightly at first. Then the one with the sky/electric-blue energy bleeding off of him in the holographic projectors began to _

_move in a way that neither of the other two were._

_His movements matched the beat Jazz was already swaying to, his head bowed to feel every microsecond of the full song, narrowing in upon the true beat. Raising his arms, the judge pointed to the other two, hearing their good-natured laughs as they ceded victory to the bot who was currently so caught up in his dance, in his mind, that he didn't notice the masterdancer matching his moves perfectly, mirroring and then elaborating, matching and then moving to an opposite, corresponding movement. The professional and the amateur danced together to the beat of a thousand worlds, no words exchanged, movements the language of the night._

* * *

Without warning, they were suddenly in the desert again, the final bars of the song of their meeting filtering through Jazz's soundsystem, causing both to reach out in the original moves, feeling the song in their very Spark, entwining limbs carefully, new appendages and armor partially getting in the way of the tender, wistful embrace.

Neither spoke, neither had to. One couldn't.

They separated, a new song already in the speakers, and swayed together in established dance patters, as they had when the contest was declared over, and the patrons had flooded the floor, surrounding them with congratulations that neither had heard, watching each other for cues.

* * *

_They only stared at each other, able to take in that of all the patrons in the bar, they were two of the few who could be able to hear that particular level of the song. Everything on Cybertron was suddenly at peace, nothing mattered other than the enjoyment of dancing._

* * *

Bumblebee, whose voice had won Jazz over without even a second thought due to its lyrical and tender nature, sympathetic where there was for the most part apathy in their culture; he spoke in a way that his voice caressed the Spark and drew repressed emotions to the surface. Maybe it was because Bumblebee didn't hide the emotions from his own voice and manners.

Jazz, whose easygoing and carefree nature had caused Bumblebee to relax to the point of actually lounging in public, breaking his mood from his excruciatingly stressful yet boring duty as a guard over the AllSpark to the kind of ease where one needed to only lean against a good friend, where words were no longer of importance.

They had been chosen from all the Autobot volunteers to assist Optimus Prime and to become part of his personal team; Jazz for his cultural knowledge, Bumblebee for his determination in not revealing the destination of the AllSpark to Megatron, which cost him his voice.

Jazz danced with Bumblebee, not touching, just mirroring, elaborating, then leading, watching as the younger mech learned and imitated, following his lead. He wanted more than anything to hear that voice again . . . that voice . . . that song he sang . . .

Would he ever hear the slightly-younger bot sing with his beautiful, untrained voice again? That younger mech trying his voice against the elder's own smooth, deep one, raw talent pressing against trained professional?

Would they ever be able to dance after this? After their final battle with Megatron coming up?

Prime's voice . . . on their communications links . . . ETA? Damn, Jazz hated a time restraint more than anything else . . .

Replying that they would arrive as soon as they could at the rendezvous point to join up with the rest of the Autobot and the two young humans that Bumblebee had taken to guarding over, Jazz then shut his communicator off. Then came the odd purr from the Camaro, that noise that had once been a hum, a sound that still carried over so many levels of meaning: comfort, need, trust, tenderness, hope . . .

Hope.

Hope.

_Hope_.

That one word meant so much to Jazz, and he tucked the younger mech against his shoulder, silver arms wrapping around the golden body once again. He knew he was just now twice the age of Bumblebee, having been startled before when he had learned of the age of most of the AllSpark guards. They were all very young . . . but they were extremely good at what they did, and that was stick to their ground. The eldest among them had been Arcee, and even then, she had been very young, just into her adult years by a mere margin.

Jazz remembered Arcee very well. He remembered being pulled into the cadre of guards, and he remembered being able to say the right things that could get them to laugh, to relax. He remembered the off-duty pranks that he helped Bumblebee pull on any others who were also off-duty, and smiled when the memory of Arcee walking up to him, knowing that he was full-well behind the pranks, drawing her fist back and landing a punch that reminded Jazz exactly why she had been picked for that duty.

And then she had sat with him while he recovered, unaware that he was one of the few mechs who enjoyed touch for reassurance, and yet she rested her hand on his shoulder while he let his systems recover from her assault. That had been the beginning of a deeper friendship between them.

One that he had to thank Bumblebee for, and one that he wished would have gone deeper, and become a relationship.

Sighing, he opened a small tight-beam line between himself and Bumblebee, able to let his guard down and message the younger in a way that showed his emotions, his feelings and just the relief that he had found his young friend again.

_**Fear**__-__loss-needhold-keepyouclose-worry-wantyoutodance-__**wantyoutosing**__-__alwaysbyside-mourning-missing-needing-__**pleasestay**__._

Jazz sighed, holding up the larger, younger mech who had been more than a brother, more than a friend, someone whom he trusted implicitly, not expecting a reply, but was shocked at the maturity and the firm friendship behind the words, the feeling of reassuring an elder that there really wasn't anything to worry about.

_Willbeokay-allrightnow-donotworry-__**nofear**_**-**_willnotloseme-willneverfailyou-__**willdanceifyousing**__-__stayclose-willbeokay-__**keephope**__-__willstay-__**willstay**__._

And when they slowly disentangled themselves from the embrace of long-separated friends, when they transformed upon the road that brought them to where Jazz had danced, they kept a steady stream of songs of both human and Cybertronian origin between them, a constant communications line open between them that wouldn't be disengaged until this final mission was over. Danger lined the road ahead of them, and pain lined the road behind them.

They continued to move forward, as they always had.

They continued to dance.

As they always would.

_Feed my fire  
Let me put some  
Dust on your face  
Heat my wire  
You make me feel ecstatic  
Make me dance fanatic tonight_

_Tanz - Fanatica  
Tanz - Fanatica_


	2. Song Unsung

**Song Unsung**

**By Sinead**

_**Author's Note:**__ I didn't expect to continue this, but as I've noted before, sometimes you get inspiration off of the reviews that you receive. It's really cool. So it's with many thanks to those reviews that I've ended up continuing this story. There has been also a great amount of inspiration found when I rediscovered a music artist of my preteen years, one who had been a pioneer into electronic music. Mike Oldfield, who composed the genre-breaking albums __Tubular__Bells__I__, __II__, and __III__. I used his song "Moonlight Shadow" for this fic. If you find any of the dance remixes for it, that's the "version" I was thinking of, but you can also get the same understanding of the song from the original, full-length version. I also had the song "Silence" by Mike Oldfield playing while writing this. Look for it. It's as addicting as "Fantatica". I don't claim ownership of the music used/referenced, or Transformers. Sorry that it's rather short._

* * *

_The last that ever she saw him, carried away by a moonlight shadow,  
He passed on worried and warning, carried away by a moonlight shadow,  
Lost in a riddle that Saturday night, far away on the other side,  
He was caught in the middle of a desperate fight, and she couldn't find how to push through._

He ran from the desert-surrounded base, unable to see where he was running, ignoring the worried and yet tender call of his charge behind him. He ran to forget, to grieve, to just be alone. There was never anywhere that he could get away from his past, the past that continually haunted him, keening sharply in his Spark that he failed, that he was unable to protect his comrades, his best friend . . .

Collapsing upon the sands of Arizona, Bumblebee gripped the shifting, minute rocks in one fist, feeling them wrestle into the crannies of his mechanics, knowing that he would have to flush his hands of the particles before too long. But he didn't care right now. He didn't want to. His newly-restored voice keened the sharp pain of his Spark, throwing his head back to cry his pain out to the stars.

Three weeks of hearing conversation stop when he walked into a room. Three weeks of watching Optimus and Ratchet giving him looks without them knowing he saw their pity and sadness. Three weeks of Sam asking if he was doing okay. Three weeks of Mikaela tenderly just sitting in his passenger seat when he couldn't stand being alone but needing space from the other males. She would come riding with him, then when he couldn't stand to keep moving, she would pour out from her now-military allowance to give him another wash, another wax, somehow knowing that it would help him calm down. She would clean his interior with the manner of a dear friend giving another good friend a gentle, calming shoulder-rub, giving and spending time to help bring peace. On some days there would be complete silence. On other days, rare days, Bumblebee couldn't stop talking, his hologram pacing restlessly when they were stopped, showing that his mind was never still, just his actual body.

Three weeks since Mission City.

Three weeks since Jazz died.

Three weeks of agony.

Something was making its way closer, and Bumblebee reluctantly activated a scan, and then was relieved to see that Mikaela was coming on an ATV, hair braided back, goggles protecting her eyes from the sand flying up from the front wheels and a scarf around her mouth and nose so that she could breathe. She had followed his blundering, hurried footsteps through the sand, and once he saw her with his actual optics come around a dune, she skidded to a halt, turning the vehicle off. Pulling the protection away from her face, the young woman left the items upon the seat of the ATV, walking up to embrace the large, mechanical head, not saying a word.

How had she managed to stay upbeat, filled with hope when even Sam got downcast and saddened? How could she manage to take care of him while studying under the now-hermit-like Ratchet, who was 

increasingly more irritable? How could she just keep comforting him when she, herself, didn't take the time to mourn?

Mourn!

* * *

_He couldn't speak. He wasn't able to speak. Megatron had taken that ability from him, rendering him mute and a temporary cripple while Ratchet designed and built him another arm, this one with a better weapon while he joked that it would give cause for Bumblebee to protect that arm more. He was in pain, at times unable to keep still, his shoulder hurt so much. It was one night as he writhed, limbs twitching in pain that Jazz came. Bumblebee was still smaller than the Lieutenant, still very much a Youngling, and it was evident as Jazz came and embraced the younger mech, stilling the limbs that caused the pain to increase. Bumblebee couldn't make a noise, but he buried his face against his friend's shoulder._

_Three nights before had brought Jazz onto Prime's elite command group. Two nights before that had been another dance-off, only this time, Bumblebee had also been on the judging team, looking for what Jazz would have missed. The night before that, Jazz and Bumblebee had thrown their voices at each other, with Arcee sitting and listening to both, leaning her head upon one hand and falling into recharge as the fast songs turned into slow melodies of the ancients._

_Jazz had mourned the loss of Bumblebee's voice and happiness with a soft, murmured song that expressed the pure pain that the Youngling himself couldn't articulate._

* * *

He found himself singing that same song, his voice rough with disuse and his optics shuttered tightly against the starlight and moonlight. Holding Mikaela up against his face, Bumblebee stood and shifted her to one shoulder, lifting his head to mourn the loss of his best friend.

He sang.

_The trees that whisper in the evening, carried away by a moonlight shadow,  
Sing the song of sorrow and grieving, carried away by a moonlight shadow,  
All she saw was a silhouette of a gun, far away on the other side,  
He was shot six times by a man on the run, and she couldn't find how to push through._

_I stay, I pray, I see you in heaven far away,  
I stay, I pray, I see you in heaven one day._

She listened, leaning her head against the sunbright head. His voice was pained, resonating within her, causing her to hear just how much he missed Jazz. He had expressed that he worried that she hadn't been mourning their loss, but in truth, she couldn't mourn. Mikaela didn't know Jazz that well, but that wasn't the reason why she wasn't mourning.

The reason walked around behind them, smiling at her in open thanks for keeping Bumblebee in one place long enough for his slow strides to catch up with the young mech. Kissing what passed as her boyfriend's Guardian's cheek, the young woman began to climb down, allowing herself to smile and walk back over to her ATV, resting upon it while watching as Bumblebee looked down at her in confusion. He sighed, nodding, understanding that she had homework and a schedule that she had to keep, and Ratchet hated it when she was late to lessons. But why did most of those lessons start at night, when humans were generally diurnal?

He raised his head up for another keen, letting his grieved Spark speak.

Someone harmonized with him.

It was a Cybertronian harmony, not one that humans could sing.

Spinning, bristling for a fight that his personal time alone had been breached, Bumblebee dropped all guards and his defense upon seeing the mech before him, who was still walking slowly towards him, one arm wrapped protectively over his abdomen.

Jazz.

The visor lifted, revealing the skybright optics, soft and shining with compassion. Unable to stop himself, Bumblebee moved forward to hold the shorter mech's head within his hands, staring deep into those optics in confusion. He felt the mech tremble, and shifted to help him sit, unable to speak, not wanting to break the silence, the awe.

Alive.

Unable to move much, barely even functioning all the way, the elder mech pressed his hand against his head, but it was removed by Bumblebee so that he was feeling the cool metal of his brother's hand against the side of his head while supporting him. Turning to look at Mikaela, the young mech saw that she was turning around the dune, going back to the base. He whispered a heartfelt thank you to her, hearing the ATV engine roar in acknowledgement of his words, then slowly became more and more distant while she returned home.

And then Jazz's voice growled to life, reaching for the heavens in a glorious tune, one that needed no words, just pure tone, bass, treble, timbre, and vibrato, all in a trained, professional package that was back from the dead, resting within his best friend's arms, leaning against the warm torso of a mech so safe to be around that it was almost shocking that little ones didn't come up to sit on his hood if he was parked in a public area.

Bumblebee was comforted at hearing that voice, and he cycled air through his vents in a sigh at hearing it again. A voice he thought was going to be forever lost, but was miraculously here. There was a tender note, comforting, reassuring, in that singing, one that was filled with joy to be alive. But it was also a tired voice, almost as if coming back to life had been an arduous journey.

So the former Youngling reached down and took the hand of the deeper voice with his own lighter one, drawing it back up, supporting and cradling it within bright notes, cheery and chipper. The rough talent that he possessed was fantastic; it was more than enough to make any Cybertronian vocal tutor weep with envy that there had been another of Jazz's talent born yet now it was wartime, with the only training given to the Sparklings and Younglings that of the battle talents.

Their voices reached up to the heavens, thanking Primus or whoever really was up there for reuniting them for the second time on this wonderful little dustball called Earth.

_Four a.m. in the morning, carried away by a moonlight shadow,  
I watched your vision forming, carried away by a moonlight shadow,  
Star was glowin' in a silvery night, far away on the other side,  
Will you come to talk to me this night, but she couldn't find how to push through._

_I stay, I pray, I see you in heaven far away,  
I stay, I pray, I see you in heaven one day._


End file.
